<1> Benedikt shows disdain toward a final type of interacting in TinyMUDspace, which she calls "chatting":

Figure 7: Chatting

<2> Benedikt argues that in comparison to other types of roleplaying, "chatting" is tantamount to the denial of roleplaying and the existence of VR as a space. She calls it an "exchange of naked information as text from one person at a computer to another person at a computer...just raw text exchange" (e-mail 5/19/94). She compares chatting on a TinyMUD to communication in a "talk" request ("talk" is a two person, real-time interactive conferencing program that allows people to speak over the Internet from two separate computers), e-mail, the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) most of the time, and telephone conversations. Benedikt comments:

I don't say over the phone, "I look around the phone realm where our voices hover like butterflies in a still wind"--no, there's no imagery or spatialness associated with chatting" (e-mail 5/19/94).

<3> Some would qualify the claim for telephones serving merely as a medium for the kind of informational transaction Benedikt describes in chatting. Yet the prevailing use of telephones for mundane informational transaction has certainly affected common understandings of the medium.

<4> In the realm of real-time interaction in MUDspace, Benedikt is responding against the heightened use of the electronic medium and space of the TinyMUD for the mundane objective of communicating information in the manner of everyday chatting. She considers chatting to be void of the imaginative qualities of more enhanced roleplaying.

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